This healthcare organization sounds terrible. Anybody remember the thread about Sutter hiring people for months-long unpaid new grad program where new nurses were hired to gain experience by performing nursing duties without any compensation whatsoever?

Illegal much? This organization is disgusting, and why anyone would seek employment there escapes my reasoning. It sounds like a terrible place to work.

Last edit by RNdynamic on Mar 1, '13

Mar 10, '13

Man, I used to go there as a patient and told myself if I moved back to the Bay Area and couldn't get in at Kaiser, Sutter would be a solid second option. I guess I'd better stay back East where there are more choices and companies to work with.

Mar 27, '13

Sutter/CPMC agrees to a contract with its nurses in SF, clearing the path for its hospital deal

... "We are delighted to finally reach a contract deal. It's been six years of a very contentious relationship," Eileen Prendiville, a registered nurse who works at CPMC's California Campus, told the Guardian. She said that the nurses are thrilled to have attained good job security and patient advocacy standards while ensuring St. Luke's stays open. "Working with a coalition of labor and community, we were successful at changing the face of healthcare in San Francisco." ...

... For the first time, the RNs at both hospitals will be under one contract with equal job security and seniority rights. The pact includes safe patient handling provisions to stem patient falls and injuries to patients and nurses. Additionally it obligates the employer to provide for meal and rest breaks and stipulates that new technology not supplant RN professional judgment.

On economics, all the RNs will receive across the board pay increases of 6 percent over the next 34 months, as well as additional pay based on years of service in the San Francisco hospitals, at other Sutter facilities, and foreign nursing experience.

"We are delighted to finally reach a contract settlement with Sutter/CPMC," said California Pacific campus RN Susan Blaschak RN. "Our contract provides for continued patient advocacy and will keep our professional nursing standards high for years to come." ...

Congratulations CPMC Nurses. Wonder if the recent National Labor Board rulings against Sutter had anything to do with this....that or all the bad publicity they were getting with San Francisco press?

Praying that Sutter is willing to negotiate with their East Bay Nurses and we get a contract soon. I believe the hostile environment created at bedside with union bashing management takes away from our focus on quality patient care.

Friday's proposed settlement averted what would have been the 10th and longest strike in the negotiations, which began in May 2011. A 10-day walkout was scheduled to start Sept. 24 before negotiations resumed and halted those plans. ...

... The nurses said they were successful in getting management to retreat on numerous demands. "It's an enormous victory for us," Jung said. "They beat back these concessionary proposals, especially in this time where there are so many attacks on workers." ...

In a political and economic climate so heavily influenced by Wall Street, corporate CEOs, and extremists like those who shut down the government in an effort to block even the modest reforms of the Affordable Care Act, it's sometimes hard to remember that it is still possible for nurses and working people to fight and win.

Well, thank goodness for the 3,000 RNs, and a few hundred techs, who work at Sutter hospitals and facilities in Northern California. They have just delivered an emphatic message to nurses and other workers everywhere. Stand up for yourselves, stand up for the public interest and the public will be with you and you can prevail. ...

... Over two years ago Sutter threw down a gauntlet for our members at greater San Francisco Bay Area facilities. Emboldened by rollbacks for many other workers across the country and what they saw as a favorable corporate and anti-union environment, Sutter dumped a list of some 200 concession demands on the nurses.

The takeaway list was breathtaking in its detail and scope, targeting virtually every area of the collecting bargaining agreements won by nurses and defended over a period stretching back over 65 years to the first collective bargaining contracts for a nurses union in the country.

Most disgracefully, Sutter was insisting on eliminating paid sick leave essentially forcing nurses to work when sick, and -- trumpeting a loophole in the Affordable Care Act as a pretext -- terminating all health coverage for nurses and techs who work less than 30 hours per week which would have ended health benefits entirely for hundreds of RNs, techs and their families. ...
... Sutter also stubbornly insisted on massive cuts in health and retiree benefits, elimination of seniority rights, big reductions in holidays, vacations, maternity and pregnancy leave, less disability coverage, elimination of safety training for RNs, and deep pay cuts for nurses who work weekend, evening, and night shifts. ...

... Sutter assumed that its vaults of gold, an economic climate of recession and far right attacks on unions and workers, and the victory of many employers in forcing rollbacks in pay, health benefits, retirement security, and workplace rights, would pave the way for their assault on RNs. ...

... But Sutter RNs demonstrated a different path, and an unquenchable model of how to fight hard to protect standards for their patients, their colleagues, and the future generation of nurses who follow. And they won, defeating the 200 concession demands and discipline measures, and even won some contract gains, exemplifying in their long campaign the best in the nursing profession and in the labor movement. ...

Sutter continues to be a corporate machine with total disregard for it's workforce. I love the people I work with and my shift times fit my family life, so will hang in there as the job market is tight for nurses in the Bay Area. Even with our new, hard fought for contracts and decent pay rate, I would advise any nurse steer clear of a Sutter facility. Marin General was wise to kick them out.

Jan 15, '14

So after winning a hard fought for contract, the nurses are under attack again by Sutter Corporation. Quoting from a friends FB page, here is the latest:

[FONT=lucida grande]2100 Alta Bates Summit Medical Center nurses, 575 of which are 12 hr nurses, are being told by management that they either rebid for an 8 hour position[FONT=lucida grande] of management's choosing, on the shift of their choosing, or their failure to rebid will be taken as a resignation by default. The general public needs to know how Sutter's criminal negligence in providing safe patient staffing may affect their safety as patients at either Alta Bates or Summit Medical Center. As it stands today, we are in a critical shortage of nurses house wide at both facilities. Sutter refuses to hire California tax paying citizens out of California nursing schools and train them to ensure adequate safe patient staffing. Nurses at both facilities are already being asked to work overtime on a daily basis, which statistically puts patient's at risk for medication errors. Meanwhile, Sutter CEO Pat Fry gave himself over a one million dollar raise in 2012 over 2011 to a grand total of a 6.9 million dollar salary. That 6 Million Dollar Man salary leads an upper tier of 41 Sutter execs who all make over one million dollar salaries per year. Sutter's newly minted HMO, set to compete head to head with Kaiser's HMO, reaps more profits per employee than any other health maintenance organization in America. Those profits coupled with Sutter's now nationally recognized distinction of last place in charity care contributions among the entire state of California medical centers, begs the question of every fair minded and just citizen with the attention span to have read thus far. How much is too much, when patient's lives have become the "product" of assembly line health care delivery? Your Federal and State tax dollars are and will continue to support millions of deserving American working class retirees who will be accessing their well deserved Medicare accounts as 10,000 Baby Boomers retire in this country every 24 hours. Shouldn't the public have a say on salary caps for corporate healthcare execs? We demand that congress vote on their own salaries, because WE pay those salaries. And who do you think is paying Pat Fry's salary my fair citizens? Just look to your paychecks under Medicare my good people. This Fat Cat depends on the unfettered generosity of good ole YOU."

Jan 15, '14

... Sutter, do it our way or a strike

Jan 17, '14

***sigh ** and shared

Jan 21, '14

Sutter just restructured Alta Bates in a private, poorly managed and unilateral rebid process. Within a week, they have left many nurses stripped of hours and benefits without having the decency to let them know where they have been placed or if they even have a job next week--many nurses found out where they were placed by the grapevine when schedules were posted. At the very same time, Sutter is advertising for hundreds of "temporary workers." This is part of their "Go Lean" strategy as if health care was an assembly line.

All along, this facility has been short staffing it's units to dangerous levels. Clearly Sutter is a corporate bully who believes it's above the law. That it does not need to honor it's contracts or have the decency to treat it's workers with a modicum of respect. It has a right to restructure and to lay off and I am open to new ways of scheduling that saves money--but the way they are going about it is pure EVIL. They are placing former full time staff into weekend only 0.4 positions with little notice or time to obtain benefits/income elsewhere. Single family income earners are at wits end--and it's difficult to get work when all your weekends are scheduled as you need one week end available for the other facility. They are too cheap to lay off so they placed people in these unworkable schedules like a mom friend of mine who was doing 3 12's and now is 8hr dats 1.0 FTE--who wants to work at this awful facility 5 days a week? Nobody but the most desperate nurses.

How can all those officers who earn upwards of millions a year treat their workers this way? Clearly they believe they are above the law and are just thinking of $$$ and believe their powerful lawyers will protect them. I wonder if they realize how connected the health care industry is....and one day a nurse will get to chose the size of urinary cath they will need....or if they will use lube...or how hard it is to get that IV in....or how to bevel the edge of a large bore needle for that IM injection....not that I ever would.....but one can imagine a situation like this and where karma is finally served and feel a small sense of justice prevailing if only for a moment.

Those in ivory towers should walk a mile in the shoes of their nurses. They might learn a thing or two.